Unnamed Democrat: Rick, you are anti-science. Rick: You're anti-science!
I've noticed this pattern in politics - those legitimately accused frequently try to turn the very same charges around and use them on their own accuser. It is a weird sort of symmetry.
I suspect that this is true for any denialist movement. Creationists have been doing it since I started watching.
What's funny as hell is hearing the GW-deniers claim that climate scientists are just making stuff up to rake in the bucks.
There's intelligent people and stupid people in both parties.
True. But it's only in the Republican party where the stupid people win primaries.
And even that haven't always been true. They started in this direction in 1980 when they decided to suck up to the religious right to get their votes, and after 32 years the insane are running the asylum.
Or maybe just the cynics who do the best job of pretending to be insane.
>There's intelligent people and stupid people in both parties.
Maybe, but the Democrats aren't the ones holding hearings about birth control and not inviting any women. You really want to defend that position? Republicans may not have the corner on the stupid market, but they're definitely the majority shareholder.
The Republicans are just trying to solve a problem that the Democrats don't have, namely how to win elections to govern for the benefit of the rich, when there are so few rich people to vote them in.
So they do everything they can to (a) suppress votes, and (b) get the non-rich to vote against their own best interests.
Unfortunately they've chosen to appeal to people's basest instincts rather than their most noble instincts. (Presumably because noble instincts won't make people's knees jerk in a direction that will make them run out and vote against their own best interests.)
In relation to the actual topic though, I have to agree with some of Santorum's words, though not his overall point, that climate change science is largely political. Seems like there is a contradicting study for every study published and that political groups somehow always seem to magically be the first ones to praise the findings of an "independent" study.
A lot of climate scientists are going to be surprised to learn this.
There's an interesting story about that. Contrary to common Christian belief, the male skeleton does not have one less rib than the female skeleton.
Which is really funny, because having a rib removed isn't hereditary.
But male mammals, including apes, commonly have a bone in their penises called a "baculum". Whether that's related to the term "boner", I couldn't say. So one interpretation of the bible is that it was actually Adam's penis bone that God took to make Eve
Or an "explanation" for why human males don't have one. Much of the first half of Genesis is obviously etiological, if you step back and read it like you would any other culture's creation myths.
BTW, "baculum" is a Latin word for "stick" (or a latinized Greek word). A "bacterium" is a "little stick".
And that is quite remarkable as perhaps the laws of nature guided this creation of inorganic compounds (or going way back to subatomic particles) into what now exists. And gave ability to us mortal beings ability to invent a bevy of Supreme Beings to attribute it to.
FWIW, you are an idiot. The bible and christianity are not compatible with evolution and science.
They are actually compatible, so long as you are willing to ignore or "interpret" the biblical claims that have been established as counterfactual.
Eventually someone will get smart and reboot Christianity without the Old Testament (as Christians call it), or the Gospel of Matthew, and maybe other parts of the New Testament.
Santorum is a politician first and a Catholic second. He will say whatever he thinks will get the religious right to vote for him.
Side note, in case anyone hasn't heard, there was a convention of the religious right and similar sex-obssessed control freaks right after the first 2-3 primaries, and they annointed Santorum as their chosen one. The MSM offers all kind of reasons why there's not much enthusiasm for Romney, but the simple fact that they try to avoid saying is that the religious right won't vote for him because he's a Morman. (I suspect most would feel the same way about Santorum's Catholicism, were he not up against a Morman.)
I'm not sure whether he stated it right, but some physicists toy with the idea that the universe AWKI is basically the same thing as virtual particles appearing in the vacuum of space... on a rather larger scale.
FWIW, we've discovered ancient ruins of cities based upon clues in the Bible where those ruins would be. That certainly doesn't prove the entire content of the Bible to be fact, but it isn't fair to say that the Bible hasn't led to any discoveries.
And we discovered the ruins of Troy based on what the Iliad had to say.
Is there some reason we shouldn't but the Iliad and the Bible in the same category as regards claims about reality?
(At least you're enough of a critical thinker to realize that one fact in the Bible doesn't make the rest of it true. I'm astonished at how many people offer arguments that reveal that they haven't figured such an obvious thing out.)
I would agree that, in principle, religion and science are not necessarily at odds. In practice, however, the two are almost always going to end up colliding, as religion exists outside of the realm of evidence. For instance, it would have been easy to say 100 years ago that the belief that life begins at conception is simply a harmless little superstition that is not at odds with science. Move forward to the present day, however, when you have stem cell research and abortion, and it causes quite a bit more trouble.
Of course, the real problem with birth control, abortion, etc. has nothing to do with real or imagined knowledge. It's actually all about the way several prominent religions focus on controlling (other people's) sexual activities.
Yeah, the other guys was being a dick. I'm a Secular Humanist and you can believe what you will. I don't think there's any problem with belief in both creationism and science, as long as you're willing to wonder exactly how God created the universe and not leave it at "because it's in the Bible, thats all I have to know."
Call it the search for God's tools if you will.
IMO there's not any problem even if you *don't* ask those questions.
The problem arises when you start insisting on superstition as the foundation for public policy.
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Anyone with two semesters of study in ancient Greek culture (language, literature, mythology, etc.) can plainly see that Christianity is just another Hellenistic mystery cult. With lots of Greek mythology grafted on.
Virgin birth? Miracles? Witty destruction of you're opponents' positions? Raising the dead? Executed by the state for "impiety", yet embracing that murder? Harrowing Hell? Taken up into heaven?
You can't make this stuff up... because it was all made up centuries before Christianity ever got started.
And continued to be made up: We know of a Roman citizen who was prosecuted for raising the dead.
Except for the supernatural bits, Jesus is just Socrates promoted to godhood.
A tiny amount of education can dispel a huge amount of superstition.
Thank you. I've been saying this for years. Being an atheist requires the same amount of faith as being a Christian, Muslim, etc.
Bullshit. Our species has had thousands of religions, none any more supported by evidence than the next. The only honest thing to do is to apply the same standard of evidence to all of them, with the result that you accept them all or reject them all.
But since most of them are mutually contradictory, the only honest + rational thing to do is to reject them all. No "faith" required.
How come everyone, regardless of their religion, can plainly see that every religion but their own is just some crap that someone made up, but can't see the same thing about their own?
[OK, some of us do... and that's when we ditch it and become athiests.]
On the other hand, agnostics are the ones left out of most of these discussions, even though they're the only ones with a provably reasonable approach to the question.
If you get down to cases, everyone is agnostic about everything. The sky *looks* blue, but maybe it isn't really.
At some point you've got to say screw the philosophical hair-splitting, and go with the reality you experience.
Science doesn't claim that all beliefs must be justified by scientific evidence.
Actually, science does say everything you believe should be backed up by evidence. Science allows you to say "I don't know." It also allows you to say the evidence is weak, but the best theory is X. Science never says all you need is faith and/or an old book.
Where the hell does science "say" anything of the sort? Science is a process by which we can reliably improve our understanding of the world around us. Nothing more, nothing less.
I.e., by looking at the evidence.
That's all science is. The entire philosophy of science can be summarized as "reality is the only legitimate touchstone for claims about reality".
And I believe that evolution occurs, but evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
And religion doesn't explain where God came from.
BTW, the things you list aren't something you would expect the theory of biological evolution to explain.
They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.
For global warming, it's because the rich assholes they toady to don't want to change the way they do business, even if it means destroying the nest we live in.[*]
For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.
They will eventually deny the basic facts of chemistry, or that grass is green, if they think it will help the rich get richer.
[*] Related note, the junk food industry is fighting efforts to remove vending machines from gradeschools, because their profits are more important than the kids' health. It's "tobacco is harmless" all over again. We've evolved into a society where the haves only care about having more, fuck the consequences.
Never assume that a corporation, or their political pawns, will tell the truth if that would shave a few pennies off their profits.
The summary (mostly) included one of the two key facts:
each year approximately 50,000–100,000 people die in America because of [...] medical errors
But not the other:
implementation of e-prescription systems resulted in an approximately 60 percent reduction in total medication-error rates, and a 44 percent decrease in serious medical errors
So the expected improvement is 22k to 44k less deaths per year in America.
If the summary is correct (not a given!), there are 50,000-100,000 total PAEs. But only a fraction are going to be prescription-related, so the number of lives saved is probably much lower.
More seriously, or perhaps even more conspiratorially, there will be people who think this is part of some massive intrusion into their life, and a clear violation of their personal privacy, and fight it tooth and nail.
It's no conspiracy! I know a guy who knows a guy who has an e-prescription, and they deliver his drugs at night with Black Helicopters!
I recognize that there are, however, some fairly major privacy concerns....many of which still exist at the ePrescribing level. Let's face it, if a system knows what you're taking, it doesn't take huge logical leaps to deduce your underlying conditions.
That's my point - they were given provisional approval to proceed, and when they failed the tests the FCC allowed them for months to submit proposed solutions. The provisional approval should never have been given, as it's a totally different use for the band than allocated for in the license - the FCC should have closed the door right then and there.
Then we'd be reading a story about how some spoiled rich brat was suing because the mean ol' FCC wouldn't approve his nifty idea.
My idea proved to be technically infeasible, so I'm going to sue the FCC for calling a spade a spade, and rest of the world for not getting out of my way.
And maybe God while I'm at it, for creating a reality that won't bend to my will. (Although it sort-of does, in my head.)
Slashdot Mirror
... how stupid America really is ...
Sorry, that act already played out during 2001-2008.
Especially the fact that we opted for a second helping in 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
Science funding goes up under republicans, and down under Democrats.
But that's a matter of *policy*, not of accepting or rejecting science.
Doesn't this whole situation seem childish?
Unnamed Democrat: Rick, you are anti-science.
Rick: You're anti-science!
I've noticed this pattern in politics - those legitimately accused frequently try to turn the very same charges around and use them on their own accuser. It is a weird sort of symmetry.
I suspect that this is true for any denialist movement. Creationists have been doing it since I started watching.
What's funny as hell is hearing the GW-deniers claim that climate scientists are just making stuff up to rake in the bucks.
There's intelligent people and stupid people in both parties.
True. But it's only in the Republican party where the stupid people win primaries.
And even that haven't always been true. They started in this direction in 1980 when they decided to suck up to the religious right to get their votes, and after 32 years the insane are running the asylum.
Or maybe just the cynics who do the best job of pretending to be insane.
>There's intelligent people and stupid people in both parties.
Maybe, but the Democrats aren't the ones holding hearings about birth control and not inviting any women. You really want to defend that position? Republicans may not have the corner on the stupid market, but they're definitely the majority shareholder.
The Republicans are just trying to solve a problem that the Democrats don't have, namely how to win elections to govern for the benefit of the rich, when there are so few rich people to vote them in.
So they do everything they can to (a) suppress votes, and (b) get the non-rich to vote against their own best interests.
Unfortunately they've chosen to appeal to people's basest instincts rather than their most noble instincts. (Presumably because noble instincts won't make people's knees jerk in a direction that will make them run out and vote against their own best interests.)
In relation to the actual topic though, I have to agree with some of Santorum's words, though not his overall point, that climate change science is largely political. Seems like there is a contradicting study for every study published and that political groups somehow always seem to magically be the first ones to praise the findings of an "independent" study.
A lot of climate scientists are going to be surprised to learn this.
There's an interesting story about that. Contrary to common Christian belief, the male skeleton does not have one less rib than the female skeleton.
Which is really funny, because having a rib removed isn't hereditary.
But male mammals, including apes, commonly have a bone in their penises called a "baculum". Whether that's related to the term "boner", I couldn't say. So one interpretation of the bible is that it was actually Adam's penis bone that God took to make Eve
Or an "explanation" for why human males don't have one. Much of the first half of Genesis is obviously etiological, if you step back and read it like you would any other culture's creation myths.
BTW, "baculum" is a Latin word for "stick" (or a latinized Greek word). A "bacterium" is a "little stick".
And that is quite remarkable as perhaps the laws of nature guided this creation of inorganic compounds (or going way back to subatomic particles) into what now exists. And gave ability to us mortal beings ability to invent a bevy of Supreme Beings to attribute it to.
FTFY
FWIW, you are an idiot. The bible and christianity are not compatible with evolution and science.
They are actually compatible, so long as you are willing to ignore or "interpret" the biblical claims that have been established as counterfactual.
Eventually someone will get smart and reboot Christianity without the Old Testament (as Christians call it), or the Gospel of Matthew, and maybe other parts of the New Testament.
FWIW, I'm a Christian who believes in both creation and evolution.
FWIW, that is also roughly the position of the Catholic Church and has been for decades.
Santorum is a catholic but seems to be very much in the intelligent design camp.
Santorum is a politician first and a Catholic second. He will say whatever he thinks will get the religious right to vote for him.
Side note, in case anyone hasn't heard, there was a convention of the religious right and similar sex-obssessed control freaks right after the first 2-3 primaries, and they annointed Santorum as their chosen one. The MSM offers all kind of reasons why there's not much enthusiasm for Romney, but the simple fact that they try to avoid saying is that the religious right won't vote for him because he's a Morman. (I suspect most would feel the same way about Santorum's Catholicism, were he not up against a Morman.)
How do you come to that conclusion?
I'm not sure whether he stated it right, but some physicists toy with the idea that the universe AWKI is basically the same thing as virtual particles appearing in the vacuum of space... on a rather larger scale.
FWIW, we've discovered ancient ruins of cities based upon clues in the Bible where those ruins would be. That certainly doesn't prove the entire content of the Bible to be fact, but it isn't fair to say that the Bible hasn't led to any discoveries.
And we discovered the ruins of Troy based on what the Iliad had to say.
Is there some reason we shouldn't but the Iliad and the Bible in the same category as regards claims about reality?
(At least you're enough of a critical thinker to realize that one fact in the Bible doesn't make the rest of it true. I'm astonished at how many people offer arguments that reveal that they haven't figured such an obvious thing out.)
I would agree that, in principle, religion and science are not necessarily at odds. In practice, however, the two are almost always going to end up colliding, as religion exists outside of the realm of evidence. For instance, it would have been easy to say 100 years ago that the belief that life begins at conception is simply a harmless little superstition that is not at odds with science. Move forward to the present day, however, when you have stem cell research and abortion, and it causes quite a bit more trouble.
Of course, the real problem with birth control, abortion, etc. has nothing to do with real or imagined knowledge. It's actually all about the way several prominent religions focus on controlling (other people's) sexual activities.
Yeah, the other guys was being a dick. I'm a Secular Humanist and you can believe what you will. I don't think there's any problem with belief in both creationism and science, as long as you're willing to wonder exactly how God created the universe and not leave it at "because it's in the Bible, thats all I have to know."
Call it the search for God's tools if you will.
IMO there's not any problem even if you *don't* ask those questions.
The problem arises when you start insisting on superstition as the foundation for public policy.
Except that there is more evidence to suggest that the Christianity's deity is the invention of human beings than that such a deity exists in the real world. The characterization of the Christian deity is dependent on the age of the particular story characterizing that deity, with the new testament painting a very different picture from the old testament, and with elements of the Jesus story being apparent in the mythology of those cultures that Jews had contact with in the early days of Christianity. Not quite enough evidence to say exactly what happened or to build a well-developed theory, but more than has ever been collected to suggest that such a deity actually exists (which is, "none at all").
Anyone with two semesters of study in ancient Greek culture (language, literature, mythology, etc.) can plainly see that Christianity is just another Hellenistic mystery cult. With lots of Greek mythology grafted on.
Virgin birth? Miracles? Witty destruction of you're opponents' positions? Raising the dead? Executed by the state for "impiety", yet embracing that murder? Harrowing Hell? Taken up into heaven?
You can't make this stuff up... because it was all made up centuries before Christianity ever got started.
And continued to be made up: We know of a Roman citizen who was prosecuted for raising the dead.
Except for the supernatural bits, Jesus is just Socrates promoted to godhood.
A tiny amount of education can dispel a huge amount of superstition.
Thank you. I've been saying this for years. Being an atheist requires the same amount of faith as being a Christian, Muslim, etc.
Bullshit. Our species has had thousands of religions, none any more supported by evidence than the next. The only honest thing to do is to apply the same standard of evidence to all of them, with the result that you accept them all or reject them all.
But since most of them are mutually contradictory, the only honest + rational thing to do is to reject them all. No "faith" required.
How come everyone, regardless of their religion, can plainly see that every religion but their own is just some crap that someone made up, but can't see the same thing about their own?
[OK, some of us do... and that's when we ditch it and become athiests.]
On the other hand, agnostics are the ones left out of most of these discussions, even though they're the only ones with a provably reasonable approach to the question.
If you get down to cases, everyone is agnostic about everything. The sky *looks* blue, but maybe it isn't really.
At some point you've got to say screw the philosophical hair-splitting, and go with the reality you experience.
Actually, science does say everything you believe should be backed up by evidence. Science allows you to say "I don't know." It also allows you to say the evidence is weak, but the best theory is X. Science never says all you need is faith and/or an old book.
Where the hell does science "say" anything of the sort? Science is a process by which we can reliably improve our understanding of the world around us. Nothing more, nothing less.
I.e., by looking at the evidence.
That's all science is. The entire philosophy of science can be summarized as "reality is the only legitimate touchstone for claims about reality".
And I believe that evolution occurs, but evolution doesn't explain what happened before the beginning of time, or where all the mass in the universe came from in the first place.
And religion doesn't explain where God came from.
BTW, the things you list aren't something you would expect the theory of biological evolution to explain.
Yea, republicans are definitly the dumbest.
They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.
For global warming, it's because the rich assholes they toady to don't want to change the way they do business, even if it means destroying the nest we live in.[*]
For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.
They will eventually deny the basic facts of chemistry, or that grass is green, if they think it will help the rich get richer.
[*] Related note, the junk food industry is fighting efforts to remove vending machines from gradeschools, because their profits are more important than the kids' health. It's "tobacco is harmless" all over again. We've evolved into a society where the haves only care about having more, fuck the consequences.
Never assume that a corporation, or their political pawns, will tell the truth if that would shave a few pennies off their profits.
The summary (mostly) included one of the two key facts:
But not the other:
So the expected improvement is 22k to 44k less deaths per year in America.
If the summary is correct (not a given!), there are 50,000-100,000 total PAEs. But only a fraction are going to be prescription-related, so the number of lives saved is probably much lower.
More seriously, or perhaps even more conspiratorially, there will be people who think this is part of some massive intrusion into their life, and a clear violation of their personal privacy, and fight it tooth and nail.
It's no conspiracy! I know a guy who knows a guy who has an e-prescription, and they deliver his drugs at night with Black Helicopters!
Also, caused autism in his nephew's dog.
I recognize that there are, however, some fairly major privacy concerns....many of which still exist at the ePrescribing level. Let's face it, if a system knows what you're taking, it doesn't take huge logical leaps to deduce your underlying conditions.
Hey, maybe I take that Viagra for my acne!
Stick an e- in front of it. Magic!
That's so Twentieth Century. Now you have to stick an i- in front of it to make it cool.
That's my point - they were given provisional approval to proceed, and when they failed the tests the FCC allowed them for months to submit proposed solutions. The provisional approval should never have been given, as it's a totally different use for the band than allocated for in the license - the FCC should have closed the door right then and there.
Then we'd be reading a story about how some spoiled rich brat was suing because the mean ol' FCC wouldn't approve his nifty idea.
My idea proved to be technically infeasible, so I'm going to sue the FCC for calling a spade a spade, and rest of the world for not getting out of my way.
And maybe God while I'm at it, for creating a reality that won't bend to my will. (Although it sort-of does, in my head.)